Historical explanation

• Historical approach

  Lombroso suggested that criminals were genetic throwbacks

  biologically different from non-criminals
• biological approach

  Lombroso saw offenders as lacking evolutionary development, their savage and untamed nature meant that they would find it impossible to adjust to the demands of civilised society and would inevitably turn to crime.
• Lombroso saw offending behaviour as a natural tendency, rooted in the genes.

  He proposed offending behaviour was innate and therefore an offender was not to blame for his actions
• atavistic form

  Lombroso belived that criminals could be identified by physical attributes

  these are biologicaly determined atavistic characteristics, mainly features of the face and head
• the atavistic form includes-

  narrow, slopping brow

  strong, prominent jaw

  high cheekbones

  facial asymmetry

  non-physical - unemployment, tattoos, criminal slang
• Lombrosos study

  in a study if 383 dead Italian criminals and 3839 living ones he found 40% of them atavistic characteristics 
• A limitation is Lombroso failed to control important variables within his research

  he did not compare his offender sample with a non -offender control group.

  This could have controlled for an assortment of confounding variables that might have equally explained higher crime rates in certain groups of people.

  This suggests that Lombroso's research does not meet modern scientific standards.
• One limitation is evidence contradicts the link between atavism and crime

  Goring set out to establish whether there was anything physically atypical about offenders.

  After conducting a comparison between 3000 offenders and 3000 non -offenders he concluded that there was no evidence that offenders are a distinct group with unusual facial and cranial characteristics

  This challenges the idea that offenders can be physically distinguished from the rest of the population and are therefore unlikely to be a subspecies.
• Lobmrosos work has changed the study of crime

  credited for shifting the emphasis in crime research away from a moralistic discourse, where offenders were judged as being wicked and weak-minded, towards a more scientific position

  Also, in trying to describe how particular types of people are likely to commit particular types of crime, Lombroso's theory in many ways heralded the beginning of offender profiling.

  This suggests that Lombroso made a major contribution to the science of criminology.
• several critics have questioned whether Lombroso's legacy is entirely positive.

  Attention has been drawn to the racist undertones within Lombroso's work. Many of the features that Lombroso identified as atavistic are most likely to be found among people of African descent.

  In other words he was basically suggesting that Africans were more likely to be offenders

  This suggests that some aspects of his theory were highly subjective rather than objective, influenced by racial prejudices of the time.